TV

Here’s Why Everyone’s Talking About ‘The Bear’, A Frantic New Restaurant Dramedy

And it's finally, finally, coming to Australian screens very soon.

by Reena Gupta  19 July 2022

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It’s 2020 all over again because the best show on TV is not yet available to legally watch in Australia.

This year it’s the new FX series The Bear, which tracks the journey of wunderkind chef Carmie Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) as he returns to Chicago to run his family’s beef sandwich shop after a traumatic fine dining stint in NYC.

“This show is all forward momentum and kinetic energy,” wrote Vulture’s Jen Chaney of the show’s frantic tempo — most of which is set in the restaurant kitchen, where chefs Sydney (Ayo Edbiri), Marcus (Lionel Boyce), Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas), and Ebra (Edwin Lee Gibson) hustle to get the job done while dealing with a near-constant roar from ‘cousin’ Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach).

“There is no time,” Chaney says of the series, which consists of eight 30-minute episodes. “You want exposition? Go watch Stranger Things so you can have the Upside Down explained to you for the fifth time. Dinner service starts in 20 minutes.”

Billed by several publications as the most “stressful” show of the year, it’s also being declared one of its best, with the Atlantic describing it as a study of masculinity that is “almost anthropological in its analysis of the ways in which men and male-dominated cultures are set up to fail”.

Reactions to the show on social media have been pretty positive, too.

The good news is that people in Australia will be able to legally watch The Bear from August 31 on Disney+. It’s a while away, but it’s a date nevertheless.

In the meantime, here’s a scene that will prepare you for the kind of mental fortitude that watching this show demands. Godspeed.