The Bear, season 3, review: TV’s finest dining is beautifully, stubbornly slow-cooked drama

Without wishing to over-egg the culinary metaphors (there, done it already) the third season of The Bear (Disney+) is haute cuisine for the small screen. Christopher Storer’s tale of a brilliant Chicago chef, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), trying to co-opt his neuroses into a successful fine-dining restaurant shoots for the moon and on several occasions gets there. Emboldened by the stunning success of seasons one and two (and with guest stars such as John Cena and Josh Hartnett to prove it) it is prepared to try all sorts: episode one, for example, is a virtually dialogue-free flashback tour of Chef Carmy’s culinary past that is a beautiful collage of memory and moments.

Equally, if you came to The Bear fresh to see what all the fuss was about, you might wonder why they’d started the new season with a high-end supermarket commercial.

Away from the formal experimentation, other episodes follow more traditional lines. The Bear – Carmy’s new restaurant – is open, with Carmy and fellow chef Syd (Ayo Edebiri) supposedly working as partners, and “Cousin” Richie (the exquisite Ebon Moss-Bachrach) newly installed as the maître d’. But Carmy’s obsession is turning into mania. He wants a Michelin star. He wants to change the menu every day, all of it. And he’s got a list of what he’s calling “non-negotiables” that includes bromides about “vibrant collaboration” and something about teaspoons.

Non-negotiable teaspoons is tantamount of course to madness, and it’s on that brink that The Bear likes to teeter. The show’s calling card in its first season was taking its audience on a mental destruction test that should have required your Disney+ subscription to come with free blood pressure medication. Come season three and, incredibly, The Bear is still searching for new ways to make watching TV feel like extreme psy-ops.

In some of the middle episodes of this season, in an attempt to give an idea of the pressure involved in the restaurant’s first month of full opening, the show starts using flickering fast-cuts like it wants to induce a seizure. As with haute cuisine, it’s ingenious and it’s intense… but it’s not something people will want to sit through after tea and scones.

Whereas the spectre at the feast in season one was Carmy’s late brother, Mikey, the ghosts haunting season three (and there is a clever running gag about people “haunting” each other that spans several episodes) are both women. There is the absence of Carmen’s girlfriend, Claire (Molly Gordon), his obvious soulmate who he nonetheless managed to drive away last year by telling her that she was getting in the way of his cooking; and there is his mother, Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis), who provided the highlight of season two when she decided to end a family argument by driving a car straight through the house. If validation and culinary transcendence continue to elude Carmy (as they surely must, as long as The Bear is to remain interesting), then Claire and Donna are the missing links.

But it does mean that much of season three revolves around absence. With Claire and Donna only memories for the most part, this season does a lot of looking back without ever really moving forward. The stories – will they get that crucial good restaurant review?; Will Syd stick around?; Will Richie hold it together? – are all familiar from seasons one and two (and from Boiling Point, too).

There is no doubt that The Bear remains among the very best shows on television, its own non-negotiables – a singular marriage of peace and chaos framed in superb camerawork and terrific performances – are all present and correct. Could it have pushed it more in season three, let it rip, strived ever more for excellence and vibrant collaboration? I know what Carmy would say.

All three seasons of The Bear are available to watch now on Disney+