The Bear season 2 review — the best show on TV gets even better

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“Every second counts”. The words are inscribed on sleek kitchen walls and scrawled on calendars in Chicago sandwich shop The Bear. They are there to inspire in moments of pressure and to comfort in moments of existential angst. Both are plentiful in The Bear.

The second season of the outstanding Hulu comedy-drama appears to be driven by the same mantra. Beneath all the breathless chaos that’s synonymous with the show, is a meticulous sense of craft and focus which means that scarcely a moment in the 10-episode run is redundant or wasted. Every line, shot and performance contributes to the feeling that what we’re watching is the best thing on television right now.

The new series picks up shortly after the improbable deus ex machina ending of season one — in which The Original Beef diner was saved from financial ruin when it transpired that the late owner had marinated thousands in illicit earnings in cans of pulped tomatoes. With this new source of cash, head chef Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) and his team set about transforming their greasy sandwich joint into a slick high-end restaurant.

Bittersweet piquancy is still the show’s signature flavour, and scenes in which everyone is yelling at once are still its speciality, but these new episodes are even more rewarding. In going beyond the claustrophobic confines of the kitchen, the show allows the entire ensemble more room and time to develop. Alongside the restaurant renovation story arc, there are extended sequences (and whole episodes) devoted to sweet-natured pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce) — who undertakes an apprenticeship in Copenhagen — retraining old-hands Tina and Ebraheim, and chef de cuisine Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), who seeks inspiration for a new menu, and recognition from Carmy.

The result of more egalitarian plotting is that we see slightly less of Carmy. But White can convey much with little — a glance, a pause, a terse reply enough to hint at the ceaseless conflict between his character’s impassioned heart and joy-denying brain as he starts a new venture and bumps into an old high school crush.

Last, and feeling very much least, is Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), the restaurant’s “manager” and Carmy’s “cousin”, who has become acutely aware that he is, in reality, neither. So often treated as a screw-up and punchline, he is given some purpose and self-respect in a wonderfully touching episode that sees him apprentice for a world-leading chef (a lovely cameo from Olivia Colman).

Moods and emotions are always on a knife edge in The Bear. Before Richie’s moment of tenderness comes a bruising hour-long episode that flashes back to a nightmarish Berzatto family Christmas. Starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Jon Bernthal as Carmy’s volatile mother and late brother (Bob Odenkirk and Sarah Paulson also appear), it is an extraordinary piece of tragicomedy — at once a hysterical farce and a raw, soul-draining domestic drama. You wish more TV could be this intense while feeling relieved that it isn’t.

★★★★★

On Disney+ and Hulu now