Louis CK has released a new online comedy today without any advance publicity or warning or previews. Though it is actually more of a play or a comedy drama than a sitcom. There is no studio audience.

It co-stars Steve Buscemi, Steven Wright, Alan Alda, Edie Falco and Jessica Lange. The action is set in a Brooklyn bar, run by Louis CK and Buscemi, but despite the gentle theme tune and the friendly juke box in the corner and Louis CK doing a little dance as he prepares for the day's business this is nothing like the wisecracking of Cheers. The customers are miserable and lonely or angry, while Horace (Louis CK) seems to be having problems with both his business and different members of his family. 

The setting and slow pacing feels more theatrical – there are no ads but there is an "intermission" half way through. The humour is dark and bleak and closer to CK's angry stage persona or Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman or David Mamet than it is to conventional mainstream sitcoms. Secrets and lies spill out as the 'action' progresses. What does it mean to be a good father, it asks at one point.

It's timeless but also very up to date though, complete with jokes about Donald Trump, a customer suggesting that maybe the country is on the way down and Trump is the kind of President it deserves and that his slogan should be "Let's get this shit over with".

The first episode of Horace and Pete, which unlike traditional sitcoms lasts over an hour, is available via the comedian's website for $5 here.