‘The Bear’: the best series of the year takes place in a restaurant on the edge

However, the series that Disney Plus has just released in our country does not sell recipes or Instagram menus. If it resembles anything, it is ‘Hierve’, the British film by Philip Barantini available on Filmin, which followed in real time the day to the limit of a chef harassed by debts, who got into everything to get to the desserts. Directed by Christopher Storer (‘Ramy’), deep down ‘The Bear’ isn’t even about cooking, but about the work that life devours us, going back to the roots, the family legacy, addictions, the neighborhood, the work ethic, mourning, class pride. It is, without a doubt, one of the series of the year.

Jeremy Allen White, one of the protagonists of ‘Shameless’, overflows his sad and vulnerable charisma in the skin of a professional chef who has even worked in the legendary Noma and who returns to The Original Beef of Chicagoland, the joint specializing in sandwiches from veal. The dish is typical of Chicago, where, at the time of the Great Depression, an Italian immigrant cut the beef in his sandwiches into thin slices to make it go further and cooked it in his juices. The Italian Beef was born, which can include sweet or hot green peppers, cheese and veal sauce as a condiment between the slices of French bread.

From the first of its eight half-hour episodes, the series from the production company F/X, a Disney subsidiary that is also responsible for Danny Boyle’s stupendous ‘Pistol’, communicates the stress and anxiety of working to the limit in such a small space like a kitchen. Carmen ‘Carmy’ Berzatto faces grief for her brother trying to make a failing neighborhood restaurant work. On her day, her brother prevented her from working at the premises, knowing that her future was in haute cuisine. Carmy will try to understand why her brother, addicted to pills, committed suicide and why she asked a friend for $350,000 that seems to have vanished.

If a series is worth as much as its characters, ‘The Bear’ treasures memorable creatures of flesh and blood. Like the nervous and dangerous cousin Richi (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, the Desi Harperin of ‘Girls’), who makes a little money passing coke in the alley, the undisciplined cook Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) or the ambitious Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) , whom Carmy hires to try to turn a group of undisciplined kitchen boys into a work crew. She is one of the strengths of the series, the portrait of a black girl today, highly prepared and responsible, but faced with an atrocious work reality.

An image of ‘The Bear’, which broadcasts Disney Plus.

‘The Bear’ (The bear) finds the meaning of its title in the first and last sequence of the series, but we will not do spoilers here. Its atmosphere and spirit are reminiscent of dramas about the ‘blue collar’ universe that American cinema tackled especially in the 70s and 80s. Chicago is one more protagonist. And although the protagonists have iPhone, the series could take place in a bygone era. As Christopher Storer explains, the real restaurant on which the fictional Mr. Beef on Orleans is based sports a sign that reads “Even though it’s 2022 out there, it’s still 1988 here.” That’s why Genesis, Wilco, Counting Crows, Wilco, Pearl Jam, REM, The Beach Boys…

With a seventh episode of barely twenty minutes shot in a single sequence shot, a prodigy of tension, ‘The Bear’ contains dreamlike moments in the mind of its protagonist, joyous bursts of comedy and an avalanche of information in the dialogues with a nervous camera that refers to Scorsese’s cinema. Perhaps at first it can be overwhelming and difficult to digest so much nervousness and stress, but the final reward is worth it. As the ‘New York Times’ reflected, it is not necessary to have worked in a kitchen to recognize the chaos and precariousness that ‘The Bear’ shows.