Horace and Pete

It’s not easily definable as a format, being the love child of a passion for O’Neill, stand-up comedy, and the most available format C.K. has--a webseries. That makes for a strange and sublime episode, one that is gripping in both how different it is and how familiar it feels.

There is, as in live theater, the occasional hesitance over a line, and the first episode relies on melodramatic twists that don’t always feel earned. But when it really gathers steam--nearly any time Mr. Alda opens his mouth, and especially in his scenes with Ms. Falco--it’s like little else on TV. (If it can be said, technically, to be TV at all.)

A lot of these scenes hit the mark, others hit the floor with a thud. But, much like last summer’s The Carmichael Show, it’s an admirable exercise either way.

If the show has flaws--it’s certainly slow-moving, and the intentional abrasiveness of its characters can sometimes feel cartoonish--they deserve to be forgiven just because of the singularity of vision on display.

There’s a lot of speechifying, some of it is moving and fascinating, some of it sounding like penny-ante Eugene O’Neill. It’s also completely fascinating, and full of really wonderful performances.

Even at its most obvious or ungainly, it's never less than interesting, and it's certainly not shy of conviction; no C.K. fan with an Internet connection and $5 to spare will want to pass it by.

The acting is superb, especially as the tensions become more overt in the second half.... He’d probably kill with the same material [on poltics and current events] in a stand-up show, but in a script about abuse, alcoholism, denial, and family estrangement, it doesn’t quite work. The strength of Horace and Pete is in the age-old themes festering at its heart.

Too much of the show may remind you of the experience of being trapped in a bar with shrill drunks who aren’t anywhere near as fascinating as they seem to think. Still, the series lingers in the mind. With its hurts and silences, its yellow-brown lighting and oak-and-sawdust textures, and its sense of impending doom, it is unlike anything else that calls itself American television.

With Horace and Pete, [Louis C.K.'s] ambitions can sometimes outrace his execution, but the commitment of his cast to a consciously old-fashioned kind of drama reminiscent of Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill makes the pilot exciting even when it’s a bit stilted.

Horace and Pete is quiet and intimate when it's at its best, but in so many ways it feels like indulgence. And that's fine. If you're operating at Louis C.K.'s level, I guess you get a few of those.