Raising The Bar

I've been able to watch a little Hulu through a friend's subscription.  One of the first things I checked out was the miniseries Horace And Pete.

Creator Louis C. K. dropped Horace And Pete out of nowhere in early 2016.  He shot it secretly and made it available on his website for anyone willing to pay. The ten episodes are of varying length (shortest is 30 minutes, longest, 67 minutes), which helps give it a homemade feeling, as does a willingness to stop the action to allow a character to discuss something for considerable amounts of time.  Louis C. K. was doing his series Louis around the same time.  Louis is a comedy, though it can be very serious, while Horace And Pete is a drama, though it has plenty of humor.

The basic premise is we're at Horace and Pete's bar, a Brooklyn watering hole that's been around for a century, always run by brothers named Horace and Pete.  Louis C. K. is Horace, Steve Buscemi is Pete, Edie Falco is their sister Sylvia and Alan Alda is Uncle Pete, who used to run the bar. There are also the bar regulars, such as Leon (Steven Wright) and Kurt (Kurt Metzger). There are numerous recurring characters, including Marsha (Jessica Lange), Horace's dad's last partner, Tricia (Maria Dizzia), a woman with Tourettes who met Pete in the mental hospital, and Alice (Aidy Bryant), Horace's estranged daughter. (Mayor De Blasio makes a guest appearance where he actually defends the NYPD, somewhat.  It's also got a theme song written and performed by Paul Simon.)

There are numerous issues the characters have to deal with: Pete has serious mental issues; Horace has relationship problems, new and old; Sylvia has cancer; Uncle Pete is a miserable guy who's hard to deal with; and the bar is run down and perhaps should be sold.

Louis prepared us for Louis C. K.'s vision, so the turn to drama is not that startling.  His willingness to indulge in long monologues, dark stories and cul-de-sac contemplations are given free rein in Horace And Pete.  It makes for compelling moments, but also those where a blue pencil is in order.

Almost all the action takes place at the bar and the rooms above where the characters' live. It's shot like a live show, but done without an audience. In general the acting is fine, and Alan Alda especially stands out (in a part written for Joe Pesci).

While the action may seem almost random at times, it is going somewhere, and I don't want to spoil that.  I'd recommend Horace And Pete.  It's not like anything else on TV, and while it may not have conventional payoffs, it's worth the journey.