The last podcast I heard gave me so much meaning to my life on a personal plane. Let’s chip away the redundant corners as to what the podcast was and sorts and focus on the essence. The podcast, being a bold take at humour, taught me that life is too short-lived to frown over this skewed world and heavily skewed lives we are entitled to, so let’s portray this ‘amazingly despondent concoction of heavily skewed everythings’ as a joke and laugh at them (I laughed, although nervously, like a broken engine revving up, because duh, this is an actual problem in my life). Anyway, what I also learned is that dark comedy is what you get when you dabble with repressed emotions or subjects too piercing to speak out; but here you are laughing away at them because like the Buddhists teach, what’s the whole point of worrying when things or life in general is bound to take its own course (too deep to sink, but muffled laughter anyway).

HBO’s new half-comedy show ‘Barry’ is a perfect pitch for a few laughs and the nervous, thought provoking subjects to juggle with. A Bill Hader and Alec Berg creation, the hour long episodes are a clear breather with a tinge of solemnity, however. The show aims at a final picture, larger in life, interspersed with a few tonal curvatures and comic elements to make the show breezy. The premise of Barry is a simple formula- a Mideastern hitman is on his next prey. Little does he realise, while on his course, that his new target sets altogether new happenings into motion. Soon, Barry discovers his calling.

Barry (Bill Hader) is out on his next hunt; his next prey being an actor to-be. His mission takes him to Los Angeles where he discovers acting and a rejuvenated sense of living for that one time in his life. He thus makes up his mind to leave the old life behind and move beyond, but would giving up the job of a hitman be really that smooth a transition!? You bet not.

The story gradually peels off to a deeper perspective. Barry understands that he shares a deep similarity with all others at the acting class – the quest to attain the meaning of their own lives in a spiritual realm. Driven by the ‘real questions’ Barry experiences a world of difference but the onset of the ticking bomb whose wick he had set spark to previously, refuses to stop nudging him. The emotional weight of the show is not lost on us, as the story advances it bears forth introspective questions worth pondering over. That is what the motto of the show is, after all.

Consciously worked on, Barry is a picture full of life, so much so that you keep craving for more such pictures from the same artist. Thus, it places a conscientious question on our tables with a little comedy drizzled to keep the mood airy. All the factors of this show have been clearly weighed carefully unmistakeably making it a huge party popper on the TV front.