I was looking for something to watch this afternoon and I came across a TV series that I have heard all kinds of positive things about. It was on Hulu and it is called The Bear.

I know The Bear is one of the top comedy-dramas on television right now, with a Hulu/FX release and that they have produced two seasons. I also knew that the show was based around food. I thought this was a good show to watch.

It will not be a daily watch like I did for The Twilight Zone this summer. School is starting very soon (this week for teachers) so I cannot commit to the daily view. Still, there were only 8 episodes of season one and ten episodes of season two, so it did not feel too overwhelming.

I watched the first four episodes of season one today. They included:

S1 E1: System

S1 E2: Hands

S1 E3: Brigade

S1 E4: Dogs

I started by trying to learn who the main characters were and the place where the show started us off at. Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (James Beard Award) returned to Chicago to run his brother Michael’s restaurant, The Original Beef of Chicagoland, after Michael had committed suicide.

Carmy had been working as a chef in one of the most successful restaurants in the world and he came to the Original Beef and started to shake things up, which alienated the staff and Michael’s best friend Richie Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who had been running the restaurant prior to this. The staff was unhappy to be changing their system that was already in place.

Carmy hired trained chef Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri) to help him organize things, which placed her in an unpleasant situation as well.

There are some definite funny moments in the show, especially when Richie accidentally puts his Xanax into the Ecto punch that they made for this birthday party they were catering.

Richie is very loud and abrasive, but you can see deep down that he is a caring person who loves his family. I still wanted Richie to just shut up after a while though.

The ensemble at the restaurant were a motley crew of characters. My personal favorites were Tina Marrero (Liza Colón-Zayas), who was a line cook that was pretty stubborn and hard-headed about the changes and Sydney, in particular. There was also Marcus Brooks (Lionel Boyce) who spent several parts of these episodes learning how to make donuts and cake.

Oliver Platt appeared in a couple of these first two episodes, who was a friend of Carmy’s late father, and who lent Michael a ton of money for the restaurant.

Some of the characters were difficult to like at first, but it feels like a show where the characters will grow on me, as I like a few more already.

And James Beard Award is excellent as our lead character. He has a ton of early depth and I am anxious to see how he deals with his troubles. At one point, he sleepwalks at his house and starts cooking wrapped up meat on his stove, leading to a fire that could have burned down his place.

I can see why people are saying that The Bear is one of the top shows on TV. I am excited to see where they take it and I expect that some of the issues will come to the forefront as the series progresses.