Louis CK releases Horace and Pete: what is he up to?

US comedian Louis CK has delighted fans with the surprise release of a new web series and critics agree it's something to get excited about, even if they don't know exactly what it is.

Written and directed by Louis CK, the 70-minute episode stars CK and Steve Buscemi as brothers operating a 100-year-old Brooklyn bar called Horace and Pete's, named after the siblings. Set almost entirely in the bar, it introduces patrons as well as Horace and Pete's extended family, all coping with simmering resentments as the fate of the popular watering-hole comes into question.

The first episode was released on CK's website for download on the weekend for $5, without any prior announcements, surprising fans and confusing some critics.

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It's easy to say that Louis CK "pulled a Beyonce" when he posted the first episode of his new series, says Brian Moylan in The Guardian. But when Beyonce posted an album online unexpectedly, we all knew what it was, while the "thing" CK has released is "I don't even know what".

The first episode is certainly not a comedy, he adds. It's dark, "a million miles deep in a coal mine at midnight with no moon and wearing a blindfold dark" - just what is CK up to?

"Part of the power of the premiere episode comes from its unfolding without quite knowing what it is," says James Poniewozik in the New York Times. It may best be described as "a Cheers spec script by Eugene O'Neill: a snapshot of a family, and a country, suffering a hangover decades in the making".

He continues: "Do not expect a laugh riot, though there are some rueful chuckles." Like much of CK's television work, Horace and Pete is a messy experiment, but it's also probing, engaged and moving and "I'll be waiting for word of the next round".

Apart from the "thrill" of the covert release, the show also offers a sense of immediacy and exclusivity, says Ian Crouch in the New Yorker. It is as if, instead of paying to download the show on your computer, "you had stumbled downstairs into a small theatre" for a surprise performance of "a new play with a cast of famous, funny people".

The show's topicality – it mentions Donald Trump's run for president – also gives it "fresh life", says Crouch. It may be unconventional, but it's CK's most "audacious independent creation yet" and he's pulled it off.

Daniel D'Addario at Time is not so sure. "Louie has indulged a certain miserabilist streak that works less often than its star thinks it does," he says.

Still, "even at its draggiest, Louie has real visual and narrative ambition", although D'Addario wonders if "the distribution model has become more interesting than the product".