'Barry' Season 3 Is Coming: HBO Renews Bill Hader's Hilarious And Heartbreaking Assassin Show
Good news for NoHo Hank fans: HBO's Barry is officially coming back for season 3.
Bill Hader and Alec Berg's show about a hitman who accidentally discovers his love for acting has proven to be one of the funniest and darkest shows on television, and even though it's just a couple of episodes into its sophomore season, today HBO decided to renew it for a third season.Amy Gravitt, HBO's executive vice president of programming, announced the Barry season 3 renewal today. The premium channel did not reveal not sure how many episodes will make up the third season, but considering the first two seasons have consisted of eight episodes each, that's probably a safe guess.
If you're not watching Barry, you really should try to catch up. Hader, who won an Emmy for the first season, is doing career-best work in the lead role, playing a former assassin who just wants to leave his past mistakes behind and concentrate on his newfound passion, only to be constantly pulled back into the world he yearns to escape. Dramatically, this is light-years beyond anything he's ever done, even his well-reviewed turn in an indie drama called The Skeleton Twins from a few years ago. Hader is a roiled-up ball of nerves in Barry, and his humor is far more subtle than the broad comedy he's known for from his Saturday Night Live years.
Plus, it has a great supporting cast that includes Henry Winkler (who also won an Emmy last year!) as a borderline-delusional acting teacher who's dealing with some serious shit after the events of the season one finale, and Anthony Carrigan as NoHo Hank, one of the most overtly goofy characters in any major TV drama of the past several years – but he miraculously just somehow fits within the world of the show. The show is super dark but often laugh-out-loud funny, which is obviously a tough line to walk, but I'm glad to hear that they'll be walking that tightrope for at least one more season. Here's the official description of the second season:
This season, Barry is attempting to untangle himself from the world of contract killing and fully immerse himself in acting. But while Barry has eliminated many of the external factors that pushed him towards violence, he soon discovers they weren't the only forces at play. What is it about his own psyche that led him to become a killer in the first place?
Barry airs on Sunday nights at 10pm on HBO.