The Bear

'The Bear' is one of my favourite TV shows of the last few years, but, unlike most other things I love, I can understand without hesitation why some people might not like it so much. Because The Bear is above all a vibe, a vibe for people like me, and however well written or acted it is, I think the vibe is the main reason I love it.

I first heard about The Bear when I saw US music journalists talking about it on Twitter. They were talking about the fact it had used Wilco songs, at length, twice in the same series. I immediately thought "This is the show for me"

The Bear is for men who love Wilco. There is a lot of music in The Bear, not all of which is by Wilco, most of which I love, and it does not sound as if it was carefully designed by committee, it sounds like it is one or two middle-aged guys' favourite songs.

There are other things that are good about The Bear too. From early on, it has had utterly believable interactions between its characters - the chemistry (or, presumably, actually, level of rehearsal and skill) is outstanding. 

For me, the key character is Tina, played by Liza Colon-Zayas, a supporting character who is a middle-aged line cook. The screen has always crackled when Tina is on it. She holds the past and the future of the restaurant. 

Seasons 1 and 2 of The Bear had universal acclaim, whereas 3 had more mixed reviews. So did 4, which surprised me, as I thought 4 was as good as 1 and 2. Perhaps I am biased because Season 3 was the only one that didn't have Wilco on the soundtrack. Big mistake. In any case, what I was going to say was that even though 3 had a few issues, going too hard on Bear tropes and overegging the cuteness of some supporting-character comedy, it had a few outstanding episodes, none better than the one that focused on Tina's "origin story" - one of the best ever Bear episodes.

Although they have become famous, most of the main actors in The Bear were not particularly famous before it started. On the other hand, one of the features has been the litany of famous faces in cameo roles. Or rather, cameo roles is not quite right. They start off looking like they're going to be cameos and then end up being regular supporting roles. In Season 1, that was just Oliver Platt as Jimmy. The regularity of a genuine star turning up once and then again has increased from there - Jamie Lee Curtis, Bob Odenkirk, Josh Hartnett (one that seemed like a slightly jarring in cameo in Season 3, but became a really nice supporting performance in Season 4), Olivia Colman, Will Poulter, Sarah Paulsen, John Mulaney, Rob Reiner, Danielle Deadwyler, Brie Larsen, not to mention Jon Bernthal in flashback, as Mikey, Carmen's brother, whose suicide underpins everything.

There are also appearances from chefs, whether its the owner of The Beef itself which was the inspiration for The Bear, Matty Matheson as Fak, or famous chefs like Rene Redzepi.

I imagine another big vibe for Bear fans is food fetishization, which is not really my thing, but I do love some of the food/kitchen stuff, particularly the stopwatch/race against time stuff, like Tina's battle to cook a pasta dish within 3 minutes in Season 4.

But it's the music for me. One funny little thought I  had watching Season 4, on the episode they wisely included some Wilco again (a studio outtake of I'm the Man Who Loves You), the song played over the credits was Stay Young by Oasis. Stay Young, of all the Oasis songs, the one I go on about being the last, lost Oasis classic. So after my own heart, it might almost have been curated by me.

Of course, it wasn't. But my idle fancy, which I last had when watching the TV version of One Day, when every track seemed to be directly taken from the compilation tapes I was making in the early 2000s, was "wouldn't it be funny if someone read my blog".

Of course, no one reads my blog. Occasionally, there are bursts off quite large reader numbers, but I've always presumed they were bots or something, but funny if they were people who do soundtracks for TV shows ...

If that is the case, I will only believe it if I hear Bryte Side by The Pernice Brothers on the soundtrack to a hit show about cricket ...