This 4-Part Series is HBO’s Best Crime Saga Since 'The Sopranos'

Published Aug 16, 2026, 3:41 PM EDT Thomas Butt is a senior writer. An avid film connoisseur, Thomas actively logs his film consumption on Letterboxd and vows to connect with many more cinephiles through the platform. He is immensely passionate about the work of Martin Scorsese, John Ford, and Albert Brooks. His work can be read on Collider and Taste of Cinema. He also writes for his own blog, The Empty Theater, on Substack. He is also a big fan of courtroom dramas and DVD commentary tracks. For Thomas, movie theaters are a second home. A native of Wakefield, MA, he is often found scrolling through the scheduled programming on Turner Classic Movies and making more room for his physical media collection. Thomas habitually increases his watchlist and jumps down a YouTube rabbit hole of archived interviews with directors and actors. He is inspired to write about film to uphold the medium's artistic value and to express his undying love for the art form. Thomas looks to cinema as an outlet to better understand the world, human emotions, and himself. HBO’s primary calling card was its creative freedom and uncensored content, the latter of which was a breakthrough for the notoriously restricted medium of network television. It’s no surprise that the cable channel’s signature show, The Sopranos, depicted violence, profanity, and other explicit content previously unseen on the small screen. Following its 1999 premiere, David Chase's revolutionary mafia crime drama set the template for all prestige cable shows, and its influence still resonates today. Since the series' conclusion in 2007, there have been plenty of acclaimed shows in the same vein. Still, none have matched The Sopranos’ inventiveness more than Barry, Bill Hader’s breakthrough as a writer, director, and actor following a successful run on Saturday Night Live and various comedy movies. From 2018 to 2023, the four-season crime dramedy was a mishmash of multiple genres and tones that pushed HBO's envelope even further. What Is 'Barry' About? Despite his background in sketch comedy, few were shocked to see Hader deliver such an emotionally devastating and profound study of violence and mortality in Barry, as his ingenuity was apparent the minute he first appeared on SNL. The sky was always the limit for Hader, and the 10-time Emmy-winning dark comedy/crime drama, co-created by Alec Berg, represented the peak of his artistic brilliance. The hook of a hitman getting mixed up in the world of theater while pursuing his next target is the kind of cunning idea that felt wholly plausible in a post-Sopranos TV landscape. Luckily, Barry offers more than just a witty elevator pitch. The series, which also stars Henry Winkler, Sarah Goldberg, Anthony Carrigan, and Stephen Root, blends crime thriller, showbiz satire, and psychological drama. Season 1 lulls the audience into a familiar world of Coen Brothers-esque crime comedies featuring colorful characters and eccentric hijinks, only for Hader to pull the rug out from under viewers and enter the dark and tortured mind of his protagonist, Barry Berkman, who often uses the stage name Barry Block. The following three seasons plunge further into darker realms as well as the woes and failed dreams of Barry's co-star and future partner, Sally Reed (Goldberg), Barry's acting instructor, Gene Cousineau (Winkler), and his criminal colleague, Monroe Fuches (Root). 'Barry' is a Darkly Funny and Profound Look at a Troubled and Violent Protagonist Hader's titular character etched himself into the canon of great anti-heroes of the Peak TV era, a golden age shaped by HBO's output since The Sopranos. He uses his comedic background as a Trojan horse, leading the audience to expect a farcical fish-out-of-water comedy about a contract killer inadvertently immersed in the art of stage performance. By the end of Season 1, audiences are exposed to Barry's haunted, traumatized headspace, which kicks off the next three seasons' worth of moral ruminations. Even at its most grim, Barry always finds macabre humor in the characters' dire circumstances without ever undermining their integrity. Hader, an avid cinephile himself, crafted a show practically dedicated to the most film-savvy audiences by infusing multiple genres, tones, and influences into one postmodern expression. Barry dedicates equal time to its opposite genre poles: the gritty crime world and the similarly ruthless world of show business. However, Barry's lifestyle offers little glamor, as his entire underworld is filled with perpetually mournful criminals imagining an alternate world beyond their current fatalistic existence, like Fuches and NoHo Hank (Carrigan). We first meet Sally as a plucky, aspiring stage actor who quickly climbs up the ladder in the industry, but her dreams of running her own television show are compromised by the capitalistic demands of streaming. For Gene, acting isn't so much a hobby, but rather a necessary exercise to quell his demons that only compound following the murder of a loved one at Barry's hands. During its four-season run on HBO, audiences were blessed with some of the most ambitious visual craft ever put on the small screen. With his knack for awe-inspiring action and thriller sequences that blend hard-boiled drama and slapstick comedy, Hader's potential is limitless. Sure, Barry leaned into its profound, meta-textual studies and off-kilter sensibilities as it progressed, but its boldness will only ensure that it stands the test of time. Barry Release Date 2018 - 2023-00-00