5 good reasons to watch "The Bear," the multi-titled cooking series in the US

You've invested in an airfryer, you watch recipe videos on Instagram, you follow food influencers, you divide the world into those who love coriander and those who don't know what it is, you have several "message aprons" for cooking, you have a signature dish, you know how to make your own bread, you have a strawberry-shaped barbecue that costs several hundred euros, in short, you like to eat and eat well.

Of course, The Bear is going to speak to you, because never before has a television series talked so well and so much about food. The pilot for the third season—while the fourth season is dropping today on Disney+—had almost no dialogue and simply lugged its camera around the kitchens of the Windy City's great restaurants to showcase the Illinois city's gastronomic range.

The Bear is the story of a family sandwich shop in Chicago that Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto, a gifted young chef, must take over after the suicide of her older brother, played by Jon Bernthal. And Carmy wants to turn it into a gourmet restaurant, but everything is complicated in her life, in her kitchen, in her family, and especially in her head.

1. For the exceptional casting

Jeremy Allen White, the lead actor with his voluminous haircut, piercing, lost gaze, and tattoos galore, perfectly sets the scene. The actor, discovered in Shameless , inspires both empathy and repulsion from the viewer, as he seems to systematically make the wrong choices. To support him, Ebon Moss-Bachrach plays his cousin Richie, a dining room manager, close to "Carmy's" brother but a romantic slave like no other. The two have difficulty speaking frankly. And calmly. Between them is Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), a young, ultra-talented sous-chef who is smothered by Carmy. This trio loves each other but doesn't know how to express it.

2. For the army of supporting roles

Abby Elliott, Lionel Boyce, Liza Colón-Zayas, and Matty Matheson, along with Oliver Platt and Molly Gordon, complete the team that gravitates around "The Bear" restaurant. They all have strategic, sentimental, and familial importance. A quintessential college series, showrunner Christopher Storer had the foresight to devote an episode to each of them over the first three seasons to better understand them. It feels like a family.

3. For guests

Will Poulter, Bob Odernkirk, Sarah Paulson, Olivia Colman, John Cena, Josh Hartnett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Joel McHale, since its launch, The Bear has managed to surprise us with unexpected and, incidentally, remarkable guests in the series (the unexpected arrival for an episode of John Cena is a little sweet, for example). Without necessarily falling into a delirium of stacking CVs, the series finds here a way to relaunch its story and to energize it in a subtle way.

4. For Chicago

A working-class city, cradled by Lake Michigan, and nestled in several American myths, from Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls to Al Capone and Barack Obama, the Windy City is a major player in the series. The fourth-largest city in the USA is a gastronomic hub, a legacy stemming from the different communities that have settled there over the centuries, Italians, Mexicans, Poles, Irish, Koreans, Chinese. Strolling under the tracks of the Loop, the city's elevated subway, is like agreeing to be sucked into the first typical sandwich shop in a city that was for a long time the place where slaughterhouses provided half of the city's jobs.

5. For the soundtrack

Taylor Swift, Counting Crows, REM, Radiohead, Pearl Jam, Beastie Boys, Weezer—it's an understatement to say the series is backed by an absolutely exceptional soundtrack, like its theme song performed by Refused: New Noise. Yes, the title is aptly named because The Bear is a noisy, screaming series, where each character struggles to speak calmly to each other. This helps emphasize the urgency of a kitchen service and the difficulty of expressing yourself normally when you're under so much pressure.