If you loved Beef, this 98% Rotten Tomatoes black-comedy crime drama on HBO is a must-watch

Beef gets under your skin right from the beginning and in the best way possible. One second, you’re laughing at a petty argument over a parking spot, and the next, you’re watching two lives roll into a full on emotional war. It’s all things weird but also very raw, and somehow, it manages to still be really funny. That’s the beauty of Beef.

It takes the ridiculousness of human grudges and the real uncomfortable truths about who we are when the mask slips. It’s no wonder critics showered it with love, handing it a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score. Now, if you’ve binged Beef and you’re still wondering if any show will ever come close to it.

Well, It’s called Barry. And it might look like a totally different thing at first glance with a hitman enrolling in an acting class. But the DNA of both these shows is pretty similar. They juggle pitch-black comedy with raw drama, jumping head first into a pool of emotions. They also love to pull you into the heads of characters you shouldn’t root for, but do anyway.

So if you enjoyed Beef, Barry is your next obsession. Read on to know more.

Beef and Barry: The darkly funny and morally messy

First, let’s get into Beef. This Netflix gem stars Steven Yeun and Ali Wong as strangers whose random road rage explodes into a long running feud neither one of them can seem to quit. It all just starts with honking horns and angry hand gestures but they turn into a chain of escalating bad decisions, personal meltdowns, and moments that make you laugh and wince at the same time. It’s brilliantly written, extremely addictive, and will remain with you for a long, long time. Oh, and half the fun is seeing just how far these two characters will go before one of them finally calls it quits.

Now, coming to Barry, this show is not about petty grudges. But about a guy named Barry Berkman. He is a hitman who stumbles into an acting class and decides that he wants a different kind of life. But things can never be this simple in an HBO show that happens to be a black-comedy crime drama. The more he tries to leave his old ways behind, the more his violent past as well as his present refuses to let go. There is something so addictive about Barry but you're just unable to figure out exactly what it is. It could be the oscillation between the hilariously absurd moments and the nerve-racking ones that make you forget to even breathe.

Both Beef on Netflix and Barry are character studies disguised as entertainment. They don’t just throw these problems of random characters at you. They let you crawl inside the head of these characters. You start understanding why they make terrible choices, even if you wouldn’t do the same. It’s the art of making morally flawed people kind of lovable, if that's the right word for it. That’s not easy to pull off, but these shows make it feel effortless.

So, Barry on HBO is just like Beef when it comes to the dark sense of humor and character study. It's just that it's carrying a whole other bag of emotional baggage. You’ll get the laughs, you’ll get the drama, and you might even start questioning how you ended up rooting for a hitman. But, that's the whole point of it.

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