The 50 best TV shows of 2023: No 1 – The Bear

Across eight frequently frenetic episodes, the first series of Disney+’s The Bear offered the story of Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and his crew’s salvation. Grief, guilt, the curse of ambition, the need to escape and to come home were all examined through the prism of food – making it, serving it, selling it in the sandwich joint known as The Original Beef of Chicagoland, or creating it once the shutters were down as an act of penitence or forgiveness. The joint was saved and so, if less simply or comprehensively, was Carmy and the motley collection of his late brother’s friends he had inherited along with the shop and slowly moulded into a team.

What comes after salvation? A new start. A reconstruction, here both literal – as the Original Beef is transformed into a high-end restaurant named The Bear (Carmy’s nickname in high school) – and metaphorical. In season two, every character is given room to expand and grow. Natalie (Abby Elliott) comes into her own as she rises to the many, many challenges of opening a restaurant (it says everything about the show that at one point you are breathless with suspense over whether a little blue balloon will or will not inflate under a gas inspector’s watchful eye). We meet Sydney’s father (Robert Townsend, with Ayo Edebiri still utterly mesmerising and magnificent as Syd) and learn the family history that helps drive her. Carmy starts a relationship and must navigate the new set of obligations and split loyalties it presents. Marcus (Lionel Boyce) is sent to Copenhagen to train under an expert pastry chef, which proves even more of a feast for his soul as he wanders the streets, temporarily free of the burden of caring for his beloved sick mother. Tina and Ebra go to culinary school and we see what is needed beyond the simple fact of an opportunity before it can be seized. Above all, perhaps, there is Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) who is – now that the first storm of his sorrow has passed, but Mikey is still gone – desperately adrift. “You ever think about purpose?” he asks Carmy early on. “I’m sorry,” Carmy replies as drifts of paperwork, sample menus and notes of missed calls gather around him, “I don’t have time for this.” Yet he does. He sends Richie to learn the ropes at a fine-dining restaurant, where this explosive, unhappy man finally finds a way to stand still – while polishing forks – and make sense of his life.

In general, the second series is a little less high-octane than the first as it dives deeper into each of its characters. But there is also episode six, an extraordinary, double-length flashback episode to a pivotally traumatic Christmas in the Berzatto household. It has Jamie Lee Curtis giving a heartbreaking, terrifying performance as the children’s volatile mother Donna, Bob Odenkirk as her on-off boyfriend Lee and Jon Bernthal as Mikey in the throes of his addiction. If you are about to face your own difficult family Christmas, save this till the New Year. It will flay you alive.

Though The Bear’s canvas expanded, it kept everything that made it great the first time round. The intensity. The wit. The flawless direction. The perfectly naturalistic dialogue that never wastes a moment or misses a beat.

It also retained the remarkably old-fashioned set of ideas and ideals at its heart. The Bear still venerates discipline – especially self-discipline – and only admires talent when it is unyieldingly coupled with hard work. It believes in humility and redemption and moments of grace. It does not entertain the modern myth that someone can have it all. If you want to be the best at something, you have to choose. You cannot be divided. And then you have to own that choice. It believes in the sublimation of the individual into a greater whole. And all while bug infestations, black mould, shonky gas lines and arcane serving-hatch regulations are doing their level best to destroy you.

The Bear, in short, remains a banquet.