The Bear Disney+
The Walk-In ITV | ITV Hub
Paxman: Putting Up With Parkinson’s ITV | ITV Hub
Jungle Prime Video
As I started watching The Bear, the much-lauded Disney+ dramedy about people working in a struggling restaurant in Chicago, I wondered whether the hype (and the streaming fee) was going to be justified. It looked OK: Jeremy Allen White (from the American Shameless) plays Carmy, a fine dining chef whose brother, Michael (Jon Bernthal), killed himself, leaving Carmy a rundown Italian-American joint, the Original Beef of Chicagoland. Still, I mused, after all the fuss made about it in the US, where it aired on Hulu, The Bear needed to be nothing short of brilliant.
And brilliant it is. Not only did I wolf down all eight episodes, I felt like taking the entire cast out to continue the party afterwards, with the nibbles and the paper napkins on me.
The instalments are short – around half an hour – but The Bear isn’t lightweight. It’s a kitchen-based near-operetta of trauma, love, grief, alcoholism, camaraderie, resilience, debt and shredding anxiety, represented for Carmy by a growling bear. While customers barely register, the culinary misfit ensemble includes Michael’s brash friend Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) mocking Carmy’s Michelin-star approach and bristling at the regime change: “This is your brother’s house, OK, remember?”; Ayo Edebiri as the talented, uptight Sydney; Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas), the sardonic saboteur; and Marcus (Lionel Boyce), whose gentle dream of making the perfect doughnut somehow becomes the show’s touchstone.
It’s so packed with brilliant performances that Oliver Platt and Abby Elliott (as Carmy’s uncle and sister, Jimmy and Natalie) end up underused, and Molly Ringwald only gets a cameo. White is the constantly moving centre: busy, tense, bent over dishes, cleaning, staring around with large blue-green marbles of eyes whenever there’s yet another problem he hasn’t the time, money or energy to solve.
There’s a rock’n’roll, Anthony Bourdain-esque energy to The Bear, and more than enough gratuitous food porn – vegetable chopping, sizzling pans – to satisfy the palate. It’s not perfect: unnecessary cheese you definitely didn’t order starts arriving late on; a shouty episode shot in real time becomes tiring. But The Bear is a triumph of straightforward storytelling; spiky enough to keep you interested, warm enough to thaw into comedy, and with a cheeky, food-related twist tossed in at the end. Chef’s kiss.
On ITV, new five-part drama The Walk-In, written by Jeff Pope and directed by Paul Andrew Williams, is based on a harrowing true story that took place around the time of MP Jo Cox’s murder in the charged Brexit landscape of 2016. Stephen Graham plays Matthew Collins, a reformed neo-Nazi now working for the anti-fascist organisation Hope Not Hate. In an attempt to thwart a far-right group’s copycat plot to murder the Labour MP Rosie Cooper, Collins needs a “walk-in” – here, a young, disillusioned member of the group – to spy on them.
Wading through the real-life ugliness and grotesque language (“dirty Jew woman”) of the first two episodes, it is clear that The Walk-In is careful not to glamorise ideological bloodshed. The preceding 2015 “white jihadi” machete attack on Sikh dentist Dr Sarandev Bhambra appears only briefly, while Cox’s murder isn’t shown at all. The price Collins (as a neo-Nazi “traitor”) pays is conveyed with the worn-down weariness with which he and his wife (Leanne Best) and family are once again forced to move house.
Graham is immaculate in a role that could be viewed as a companion piece to his breakthrough turn in This Is England. Crucially, the neo-Nazi group aren’t knuckle-dragging troglodytes. As played by the likes of Bobby Schofield and Dean-Charles Chapman, they are charming and seductive. Their surface charisma is all too credible a pull to the naive newbie (Andrew Ellis).
The Walk-In suffers from the choppy pace and tone associated with real-life drama, and fails to dig deep enough into the radicalisation of either the young Matthew Collins or the new wave of fascist-minded youth. But while it would be strange to say I’m enjoying it (who could “enjoy” such a show?), thus far it’s interesting and penetrating.
Still on ITV, there was Paxman: Putting Up With Parkinson’s. The former Newsnight presenter, who was to political interrogation what dragons are to Game of Thrones – fiery, non-housetrained, indispensable – was formally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2021 after collapsing. But a neurologist tells him here that he had already spotted the condition in the facially immobile “Parkinson’s mask” the presenter had exhibited while chairing University Challenge.
Paxman displays his signature mix of conviviality/scorn, which also gives this one-off documentary its name: “I’m not living with (Parkinson’s); I’m putting up with it.” He refuses to “blub” on camera, calls someone a “cheeky bugger”, gleefully reminisces with the politician he’s best remembered for savaging (Michael Howard is a sport), and chuckles as Sharon Osbourne (representing Parkinson’s sufferer Ozzy) affectionately labels him “a miserable old sod”.
Elsewhere, he undertakes everything from lawn bowls and Parkinson’s dance groups (“I thought it would be very embarrassing, and it was”), to meeting a woman who detects the disease by smell, and inspecting Parkinson’s-afflicted brains – arranged, rather horrifyingly, in slices, like artisan mushrooms. Sometimes it’s unbearably sad, such as when Paxman is shown preparing for his imminent exit from University Challenge, or glumly resigning himself to not getting better. This is a fascinating, informative hour that (sorry, Paxo) is worth anyone’s “blub”.
Jungle (Amazon Prime) is a six-part rap/drill musical fated to make most of us feel past-it, however diligently we cock an ear trumpet to our Stormzy albums. Joking apart, the series, created by Junior Okoli and Chas Appeti (AKA duo Nothing Lost), is a spirited attempt to concoct an intense, Blade Runner-adjacent near-future in which recognisable Top Boy gangland scenarios (money, murder, revenge) play out in neon-lit vistas, topped with a dazed, nightmarish Euphoria-like feel.
Sometimes, instead of dialogue, the cast “spit bars”, which is where Jungle explodes into life. Likewise, the cast members, including Ezra Elliott (the central character, who wants out of crime); RA (his malevolent boss); IAMDDB, who plays Mia, a fence with scary long red nails; and other artists (Big Narstie, Dizzee Rascal, Tinie Tempah). From the episodes I’ve seen, Jungle’s plot is oversimplistic, but the characterisation and artistry are strong, and the spirit of bold experimentation is admirable.
Star ratings (out of five)
The Bear ★★★★★
The Walk-In ★★★
Paxman: Putting Up With Parkinson’s ★★★★
Jungle ★★★
What else I’m watching
Storyville: Midwives
(BBC Four)
Winner of a special jury award at the 2022 Sundance film festival, this documentary follows two midwives in Myanmar, one a Buddhist, the other a Rohingya Muslim, who defy strict religious divisions to join forces in developing a makeshift maternity clinic.
Head On: Rugby, Dementia and Me
(BBC Two)
Former England rugby player Steve Thompson’s disturbing documentary explores his belief that his career caused early onset dementia, with which he was diagnosed aged 42.
The Empress
(Netflix)
If you can take more heaving corsets, this German-made period drama is billed as Netflix’s answer to The Great. Starring Devrim Lingnau, it’s about the empress of Austria and her 19th-century battle for love and the throne.
