Hulu: “The Bear” starring Jeremy Allen White

Decades ago, there was a TV sitcom about people working in a diner called “Alice”. The best thing about it was Linda Lavin who remains one of the funniest people on the planet, even though the show itself was only sporadically amusing.

Don’t expect anything amusing about “The Bear”, a show set in a restaurant in Chicago’s River North.

Carmen (Jeremy Allen White) is a young chef whose resume includes stints at some of the best restaurants in America. One day he learns that his older brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal)  committed suicide and that he has been left the family restaurant back in Chicago, a dive called “The Beef.” Reluctantly, the good Italian son gives up his high-profile career and dutifully returns to run the sandwich shop, along with his unsavory, volatile “cousin” Richie (Ebon Moss-Bacharach)

The adjustment isn’t so easy. Turns out the Beef has significant liquidity problems, and the place is an untidy mess. Carmen is determined to upgrade the restaurant. For starters, he wants each of the cooks to address each other as “chef” as a sign of respect.

Enter Sydney (Ayo Ediberi), a young graduate of CIA who’s enamored of Carmen’s reputation and wants to work under him at the Beef. Carmen hires her and she becomes a supervisor/sous-chef. Sydney brings order and new millennial-generation ideas to the place which Carmen appreciates but Richie, too wed to the old ways, does not.

Mind you, The Bear is an intense series. Every episode is packed with the tension of working in a restaurant kitchen, run-ins with mobsters like Cicero (Oliver Platt) who bankroll the place, and foul language that represents working-class Chicago to a tee. But the filmmaking is terrific. The closeups of the food platings are sublime. And three of the best TV performances of the summer are given by White, Moss-Bacharach and Ediberi.

Even if you’re not especially interested in restaurants, The Bear offers superb insights into the problems every small business faces—from meeting a payroll, to surviving a fire, to prepping for customers, day in day out. We loved every bit of it. So will you. But once again, don’t expect a laugh track, or “Kiss My Grits.”