Hulu has been on quite a roll lately, at least for me. I just finished watching two utterly different series on the streaming platform and thoroughly enjoyed both. If you haven’t yet heard of Only Murders in the Building yet—and surely there can’t be that many of you—then start watching Season 1 right now. There will be no spoilers in this blog, but if you watch the terrific first season, you will appreciate my claim that Season 2 is even better. Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez star as occupants of an elegant New York apartment building. When there’s a homicide on the premises, they decide to investigate and air their findings on a podcast called “Only Murders in the Building.” The title originated with Steve Martin, who a decade or so ago imagined three old men who wanted to solve crimes but were too lazy to get out for extended legwork, so they committed to solving only murders in the building where they lived. One of those old men became Selena Gomez, who is neither old nor male, thank God, and whose deadpan delivery perfectly balances Short’s mania and Martin’s dry exasperation.
Lots of stars show up for cameos. Tina Fey and Nathan Lane play crucial supporting roles, as does Jayne Houdyshell (most recently on Broadway as Eulalie Shinn in The Music Man) as the president of the managing board of the building. Paul Rudd has just joined the fun for Season 3, which hasn’t dropped yet. You’ll see Sting, Amy Schumer, Michael Rappaport, Shirley MacLaine, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Ali Stroker, Amy Ryan, and Jackie Hoffman, among many others. (I could have sworn that I also spotted Josh Gad for a one-liner, but I can’t find any corroboration of that.) Perhaps the biggest breakout role comes for James Caverly, who is deaf and who plays Nathan Lane’s deaf son in the series. Caverly recently headlined as Harold Hill in a production of The Music Man featuring both hearing and deaf actors at Olney Theatre in Maryland. But perhaps the biggest scene-stealer is Michael Cyril Creighton, who plays a cat-loving neighbor and who, like everyone else in this show, has flawless comic timing. Honestly, I started laughing just when Nathan Lane stepped into the elevator with Martin Short. It was that rare anticipatory laughter that comes when you are certain that something surprising and hilarious is about to follow, and you are correct.
The Bear, by contrast, takes place in a very gritty Chicago. Jeremy Allen White plays Carmy, a renowned young chef who returns home to take over a failing dive left to him by his brother, who died of suicide. The performances in this show are so realistic that I had to remind myself not to hate Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Carmy’s cousin Richie, who is so despicable and obnoxious, at least at first, that I was hoping to see him lapse into a permanent coma. Liza Colón-Zayas is another actor who so thoroughly inhabits her role as a jaded line chef that I found myself forgetting that I was watching fiction, not a documentary. Among the more sympathetic characters, Ayo Edibiri brilliantly plays Sydney, an African-American chef almost straight out of cooking school who is deeply in debt but wants to learn and wants to help Carmy restore and improve his sad little eating establishment. My personal favorite was Abby Elliott as Carmy’s sister, who is grieving a dead brother and worried sick about her living one and his obsessive desire to make the restaurant work. Carmy’s last name, by the way, is Berzatto, from which his nickname, The Bear, is derived.
You’ll see cameos in The Bear, too. Molly Ringwald pops up briefly as the leader of an Al-Anon meeting. Oliver Platt comes and goes. Joel McHale and Jon Bernthal make the most of their brief appearances. But honestly, the story is so gripping and the acting so good that I never registered these actors until later. I don’t want to say too much. But if you’re tired of the antiseptic kitchens inhabited on network television by Gordon Ramsey and his ilk, then watch The Bear for another look at how professional restaurants operate. You will also find yourself bonding tightly with this struggling group of complex characters. Is there a happy ending for the last episode? I’m not telling, but I will say that there’s going to be a Season 2, and I am pulling hard for the creative team to avoid a sophomore slump.