10 Best Crime TV Shows (Since Breaking Bad)

You need to overlook the premise here. A disaffected hitman bungles a job and flees to Hollywood to become an actor. It doesn’t sound too promising, but through a combination of a fearsome lead performance from Bill Hader, an at times unbelievable sense of melancholy, and high quality laughs, Barry becomes something far greater than it has any right to be.

Hader has played a wide variety of oddballs in films and TV, often with scene stealing results, but he’s given the chance to play a far more subtle character in the title role, and to develop Barry Berkman into a troubled but relatable figure.

Hader and co-creator Alec Berg are not afraid to go dark - far from it. Barry wants to remove himself from his life of violence and to chase his dreams, but the life won’t leave him be, and he resorts to desperate measures which can push him to the very brink of the audience’s sympathies.

Hader is backed by an able cast of Stephen Root, Sarah Goldberg, Henry Winkler, and breakthrough star Anthony Carrigan, in one of TV’s best ensembles at present. Season two ended on one hell of a cliffhanger; the next season can’t come soon enough.