Karl Puschmann: Is The Bear the most stressful show on TV?

Jeremy Allen White stars as Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto in The Bear, streaming on Star on Disney+.

In television, extreme circumstances are usually the trigger of stress for the viewer. More often than not its the threat of harmful violence that gets you sweating and inching closer to the edge of your seat while your white knuckles grip the armrest.

As an example think of Netflix's recent surprise hit, the dark thriller Squid Game, which is one of the most stressful shows in recent memory. The stress of the series didn't lie in the cold, cruel and violently sudden deaths of its contestants, instead it came in the deliciously awful build-up to them as the players fear, nerves and extreme anxiety ramped up as they wrestled with the knowledge that failure meant game over in the most literal sense possible.

It's not the violent moment itself, no matter how bloody, gruesome or grizzly it is, that's stressful, it's the implication of it.

The Bear, which is streaming on the adult Star hub of Disney+, is not a violent show. But it is the most stressful show I've watched in a long time. In a lot of ways the stress it puts you under is much worse than any TV thriller you can think of because the series serves up a type of stress that many will be intimately familiar with; work stress.

While many of us will have been fortunate enough to not find ourselves in life-or-death situations, a huge number of Kiwis are feeling stressed out by work. A survey in March found that 68 per cent of respondents were burnt out from their job. It makes what chef Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto is going through in The Bear that much more relatable and, yes, awful.

The Bear is set in a small, struggling hot sandwich restaurant in Chicago that Carmy has just inherited from his brother Mikey, who committed suicide. As a Michelin-star chef who left one of New York's finest restaurants to take over Original Beef of Chicagoland he's not just slumming it, he's settling into the bottom of the barrel.

The thing is, his experience at the fine dining restaurant had been atrocious, working under the abusive and bullying eye of a head chef that would give Gordon Ramsay kitchen nightmares. Like a leg of lamb that's been left in the oven for way too long, he's burnt out. Original Beef is his way out.

Of course, sandwich shop staff are not the calibre of chef that he's used to working alongside and the restaurant is so deep in the hole that he has to trade his collection of vintage jackets just to be able to afford beef.

Still, he's determined to turn it around. Even as things get progressively worse. Some are unavoidable, like the sudden revelation of Mikey's irresponsible and wild cash borrowing, while others would have been if everyone in the joint wasn't stressed to the eyeballs, like when a packet of cigs is carelessly placed on the stove while frantically cleaning, and then forgotten about, right before a health inspector shows up for a routine checkup - a major health and safety violation.

Then there's his loudmouth "cousin" Richie, who'd been temporarily running the place and is not afraid to butt heads with Carmy over, well, everything as their power struggle plays out.

The series is shot up close and personal as it zooms in and out of faces and hands and ingredients and mouthwatering food in the cramped and chaotic kitchen of Original Beef. Chefs are constantly shouting, getting increasingly louder to be heard over the crashing pots and pans and sizzling food. It's frantic and frenetic and really puts you smack bang in the middle of the action.

The Bear dollops up the stress - personal, professional and financial - but thankfully the show also has a general drizzle of humour, which carries you through. And while things get heated, in every sense of the word, the camaraderie of the kitchen staff shines through.

With more Kiwis than ever stressed and on the edge of burnout, recently recognised as the number one issue facing Aotearoa's employees, you don't have to be a chef to sympathise with the strain depicted in The Bear. Fortunately, the show's so good that while you can feel the heat, you won't want to get out of the kitchen.