The Bear’s second season is even better than the first

The Bear (season 2) ★★★★★
Disney+, Wednesday

The second season of The Bear, the kitchen fire comic-drama about a celebrated chef trying to save both his family’s sandwich spot and himself, achieves something few shows do. It takes an acclaimed first season and furthers – and deepens – its best qualities. These 10 new episodes, which follow the Chicago neighbourhood restaurant’s fine dining rebirth, not only complement their predecessors, they serve up new insights, telling history, and unexpected paths forward. It is, like the dishes this crew aspire to make, an artisanal wonder.

Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) wants to break the cycle of kitchen abuse in season 2 of The Bear.Credit: Disney+

With its kitchen chaos and second-degree burn banter, the first season was about survival. The second asks what’s next? Obsessive head chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) wants a life of sorts – he Googles “fun” – and to break the cycle of kitchen abuse. “I’m trying to start from a healthy place,” he tells a support group, and there are strands of optimism both in and out of the kitchen. Carmy reconnects with high school classmate Claire (Molly Gordon), while flinty line cook Tina (Liza Colon-Zayas) thrives with formal training.

Creator Christopher Storer makes exemplary use of the furious energy and grace notes thrown off by the first season. You can understand not only why the characters want to improve, but how difficult that truly is – Carmy’s fellow chef, Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri), struggles to trust him because he is brilliant but wayward. The structure gives the supporting cast side mission episodes, such as gifted young pastry chef Marcus Brooks (Lionel Boyce) learning at a Noma-like restaurant in Copenhagen.

The ticking clock remains, but now it’s the ludicrously short 12 weeks to refit The Beef and reopen as The Bear. Given the show’s dedication to capturing the culinary business, it’s a detailed whiplash experience; you will learn how crucial a “fire suppression system” is. But alongside that there are scenes that offer experience and transcendence, as when Sydney keeps visualising a meal in her head while frequenting real-life Chicago eating establishments for inspiration.

The show’s ambitions are not minor. One episode, an hour-long flashback, sets up a Berzatto family gathering that is both captivating and terrifying. The cast is studded with name actors, who are difficult to fault individually but collectively feel a touch too much. And even then the portrait the episode paints is so valuable that you can’t fault them for going all out. “You’re going to have to care about everything more than anything,” Carmy tells Sydney. And The Bear is nothing if not that.

Timothy Olyphant, Claire Danes, Dennis Quaid in Full Circle.Credit: Binge

Full Circle ★★★★
Binge

Steven Soderbergh used to treat crime stories as a director’s magic act – he exulted in misdirection and showmanship. But the filmmaker is long past Ocean’s Eleven and his new limited series is about how everything unravels, most notably the lies we deceive ourselves with. Set before and after a botched kidnapping that ties together multiple strands, Full Circle has a churning momentum – enhanced by noir-like strings – that is gripping.

Ed Solomon’s dense script reveals the fateful crime from high above and up close, tying together a wealthy Manhattan corporate family, including CEO Sam (Claire Danes) and her celebrity chef father Jeff (Dennis Quaid), and the naive young Guyanese men, Xavier (Sheyi Cole) and Louis (Gerald Jones), flown north to work for a Queens crime syndicate. The fallout is too heavy for anyone to not only control but even carry.

The quirks are sharply jarring: the lead investigator, Harmony (Zazie Beetz), is driven and intuitive, but possibly also unstable – her scenes with Danes have a vivid frequency. The come-full-circle motif is plain throughout, but Soderbergh’s masterful direction and cinematography (under a pseudonym) keep the narrative rolling. The warm washes of light his characters move through remain, but they’re just momentary refuges. No one is truly safe.

Max Riemelt as Mike Atlas in Sleeping Dog. Credit: Netfilx

Sleeping Dog
Netflix

A knotty crime thriller by design, this six-part German mystery works best as a character study of Mike Atlas (Max Riemelt), a former police detective now living homeless on the fringes of society who must re-examine his past when an old case resurfaces and he begins to doubt his work. The plot ranges across guilt, vengeance and institutional corruption, but it’s best illustrated by the tenuous bond between Atlas and a young prosecutor, Jule Andergast (Luise von Finckh), who initially judges him by his circumstances.

Bruce Springsteen: unstoppable in The Legendary 1979 No Nukes ConcertCredit:

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concert
Paramount+

It takes a fair amount of confidence to add “legendary” to the title of your own performance, but this Madison Square Garden benefit set was for decades a revered bootleg among Bruce Springsteen fans until it got an official release in 2021. The just-released concert film backs up the self-belief: a few days shy of turning 30, Springsteen was on the cusp of becoming rock music’s central figure. A suitably ragged multi-camera shoot is all energy and outreach, complete with an unstoppable performance of Born to Run.

Foundation (season 2)
Apple TV+, Friday

Few shows are taking as big a swing as this epic adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s canonical science-fiction novels about the millennium-long clash between a galactic Empire and the scientist who foresaw its demise. With Lee Pace and Jared Harris as adversaries, the show mostly manages to tie together personal stakes and planet-hopping history in a way that sci-fi aficionados will enjoy. Creator David S. Goyer reportedly plans eight seasons (the third is already shooting) and his approach is sound: the use of physical locations grounds the storytelling in ways green screens can’t.

Chicago’s Millennium Park in E2 Design. Credit: Shelter

E2 Design
Shelter

Narrated by Brad Pitt, this succinct, informative documentary series ranges across the many applications of sustainable architecture. Without being contradictory, the narrative rewrites assumptions: the first episode explores how New York is per capita one of the greenest cities in America, because of the density of population, public transport usage, and collective consumption. In looking at Manhattan’s next generation of skyscrapers, the show details both the technical means and personal will required to improve building techniques. Subsequent episodes head to China and rural Mexico.

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