HBO will say goodbye to assassin/actor Barry Berkman as the network’s Emmy-award winning series Barry will end its run after season four.

Barry will launch its eight-episode, fourth and final season on April 16, according to HBO. Barry follows Berkman, played by Bill Hader, who works as a reluctant hitman who changes course and joins a class of aspiring actors but is never able to escape his past.

The series has won multiple Emmy Awards, including two for Hader in the outstanding lead actor in a comedy category and a supporting actor in a comedy series award for Henry Winkler.

Along with Hader and Winkler, the series stars Sarah Goldberg, Stephen Root, Anthony Carrigan and Sarah Burns.

Barry is executive produced by Hader, Alex Berg, Aida Rodgers and Liz Sarnoff.

“After three masterful seasons of Barry, we are eager for viewers to see the powerful, complex and hilarious conclusion to Barry Berkman’s story," HBO and HBO Max Comedy Programming Executive VP Amy Gravitt said in a statement. "It has been a pleasure working with this immensely talented team including Bill Hader, Alec Berg, Aida Rodgers and the entire exceptional cast and crew.”

Barry's final season announcement comes on the heels of the March 26 launch of HBO's Emmy-winning series Succession's fourth and final season. ■ 

HBO will bring back its Emmy-winning comedy series Barry for a fourth season, the network said Thursday.

The series, which is currently airing new, third-season episodes on HBO, will return for a fourth season with series star Bill Hader directing all eight episodes. The series will continue to follow the exploits of a contract killer looking to make a career change to become an actor.

Along with Hader, the series also stars Emmy winning actor Henry Winkler, Stephen Root, Sarah Goldberg, Anthony Carrigan and Sarah Burns.

Barry is executive produced by Hader, Alex Berg, Aida Rodgers and Liz Sarnoff.

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“Bill, Alec and the entire cast and crew delivered an exquisite third season of Barry, it’s a masterful blend of laughs and suspense,” Amy Gravitt, executive VP, HBO Programming in a statement. “I’m so happy to announce that we are picking up the fourth season.” ■

Season three of Barry arrives on HBO Sunday, April 24. Bill Hader plays Barry, who looks to put his hitman days behind him, and focus on his acting. 

Hader and Alec Berg created the show.

Barry was up for the best comedy Emmy in seasons one and two. Berg is pleased to see critics, and a wide audience, digging the dark comedy. “Bill and I make the show we want to make,” he said. “We push it out there and hope people find it and see in it what we see in it.”

He added, “We’re incredibly pleased people seem to get what we are going for.”

Hader, who sat for the B+C/Multichannel News podcast Series Business, said he essentially has no idea if people dig the show. “Unless someone comes up to me and says something, I never know if people are into it or not,” he said, adding that he avoids social media. 

That mindset is a result of Hader’s time on Saturday Night Live, where “one week they loved you and the next week they hated you.”

He added, “You just kinda go, I can’t deal with this.”

Berg said Barry works because it keeps the audience guessing. “The show is always very surprising,” he said. “It goes extremely dark in places, and right when it gets its darkest, something really funny happens. “We catch people leaning the wrong way.”

Berg likens that aspect of the show to Space Mountain at Disneyland, where the coaster makes a bunch of right turns in a row, then veers left. “It’s part of what we enjoy doing with the show,” he said. “People enjoy being fooled.”

So is Barry truly a comedy, or a drama with some funny bits? “I don’t know what it is,” said Berg. “It is the show.”

Hader said, “I think it’s a comedy by virtue that it’s 30 minutes, but I don’t see it necessarily as a drama either. It’s just a story with bits of everything in it.” 

Berg spoke of “finding the emotion in every scene,” and cutting comedic bits that just don’t move the story or accurately reflect the characters. “We care about the truth of these characters,” he said. 

Hader makes it all work with a deft performance. Berg noted how Barry’s criminal ventures are high stakes but low drama, while his acting pursuits are low stakes and high drama. “Bill is incredibly good at playing both those realities,” he said. “When he’s acting, he becomes eager and wide-eyed and naive and excited. When he murders, he becomes an automaton.”

Hader, Berg said, “is one of the most effortlessly talented people I’ve ever worked with.”

Barry was shut down a couple of weeks before shooting the new season, thanks to COVID. The writers and producers rewrote season three and even scripted season four. “We have a much better sense of where we’re going and what we need in season three,” said Berg. “I’m very, very hesitant to say COVID was a good thing, but it was a silver lining to the cloud.”

Hitman Barry is in a dark place in season three, according to Hader. “The noose is tightening around him,” he said. “We’ve never kind of seen him in this vulnerable place, really.”

Berg’s credits include Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. An ‘Alec Berg’ character occasionally popped up on Seinfeld. He mentioned something Seinfeld said, about how trying to make a successful show will probably result in failure, while trying to make a good show will yield better results. 

“Bill and I said, let’s make something we think is really good, and hopefully other people agree,” he said. “If they don’t, at least we are able to go home and have this thing we are proud of.” ■

Senior content producer Michael Malone chats with Bill Hader about the third season of Barry and how his time on Saturday Night Live has influenced his work. Barry returns to HBO April 24.

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HBO’s Emmy-winning dramedy Barry returns for its third season on April 24, part of a number of announcements made by the premium service during its Television Critics Association Winter press tour session Tuesday.

The eight-episode, third season of the series, which stars Bill Hader, returns with lead character Barry Berkman -- played by Hader -- attempting to untangle himself from the world of contract killing and to fully immerse himself in acting, but finding that getting out is messy, according to HBO.

The first two seasons of Barry received a total of 30 Emmy nominations and six Emmys. Also starring in the series is Henry Winkler, Stephen Root, Sarah Goldberg and Anthony Carrigan. Barry is executive produced by Hader, Alec Berg, Aida Rodgers and Liz Sarnof.

--HBO also announced a spring launch of The Time Traveler’s Wife, a six-episode series that tells the story of a married couple dealing with the effects of time travel, according to the network.  The series stars Rose Leslie, Theo James, Desmin Borges, and Natasha Lopez.

--HBO will shine a light on the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force in a new six-episode limited series We Own This City, premiering April 25. The series, executive produced by The Wire’s George Pelecanos and David Simon and based on the book by Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton, chronicles the corruption and moral collapse that befell an American city in which the policies of drug prohibition and mass arrest were championed at the expense of actual police work, said the network. 

--In May the network will debut a new documentary series, George Carlin’s American Dream, which chronicles the life and work of legendary comedian George Carlin told through never-before-seen archival material and interviews with comedians such as Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld and Stephen Colbert.■
 

HBO will premiere a new episode of its sports/entertainment talk series The Shop: Uninterrupted this Friday (Oct. 25.) 

The new installment of the LeBron James/Maverick Carter-hosted series will feature such guests as California Governor Gavin Newsom, Diddy, Rich Paul, DeMar DeRozan, Rick Rubin, Bill Hader, Jerrod Carmichael and Paul Rivera.

 The HBO series offers unfiltered conversation and debate from the biggest names in sports and entertainment, according to the network.  

In an upset, Phoebe Waller-Bridge won the Emmy award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for Amazon Prime Video's Fleabag.

Waller-Bridge beat out five other actresses including last year’s winner Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), and past multi-Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus in her last year of eligibility as politician Selina Meyer on HBO’s Veep.

Bill Hader won his second straight Emmy winner for Best Actor in a Comedy Series.

Hader topped actors Don Cheadle Black Monday), Anthony Anderson (black-ish), Eugene Levy (Schitt’s Creek) , Ted Danson (The Good Place) and Michael Douglas (The Kominsky Method) for the award.

Related: 'Fleabag' Wins Emmy for Best Comedy

HBO Friday released the official video trailer for its comedy series Barry, which returns for its sophomore season March 31.

The series, which stars Emmy Award winners Bill Hader and Henry Winkler, follows the exploits of a depressed hitman who turns to acting as a refuge from his tumultuous and dangerous career. 

Barry won 2018 Emmy Awards for best actor in a comedy series (Hader) and best supporting actor in a comedy series (Winkler).