LOS ANGELES — Not many comedies get you to care about the characters in the series, only to have you see them get brutally killed — often by the protagonist, in this case, an emotionally stunted former Marine-turned-hit man named Barry Berkman, played by Bill Hader.
And not many comedies could make you root for him, his handler — a sociopathic and manipulative father figure named Monroe Fuches (Stephen Root) — and the other characters in his orbit: NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), a murderous Chechen gangster; Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler), a comically narcissistic acting teacher; and Sally Reed (Sarah Goldberg), the narcissistic but talented actor who becomes Barry's girlfriend.
And therein lies the question that is the secret weapon of "Barry," the idiosyncratic HBO series co-created by Hader and Alec Berg about a killer who tries to find salvation in a North Hollywood acting class: Is it really a comedy or is it actually a drama?
