Why all our favourite TV shows have become so heavy

From ‘Stranger Things’ to ‘The Bear’ to the ‘Bob’s Burgers’ movie, characters have been put through their paces in the past year – and I think I know why, writes Clémence Michallon

Bob’s Burgers has a reputation for being light-hearted, but in the latest film Linda experiences hopelessness for the first time (Twentieth Century Fox Television/Kobal/Shutterstock)

Television has been heavy lately. Look at the hit show of the summer, Stranger Things, which (big, loud spoiler alert) introduced a loveable new character and made sure we all fell under his spell before ruthlessly snatching him away from us. It was a great season, but it also served as a reminder that in the world of TV right now, we can’t have nice things – or if we do, we certainly can’t keep them.

Next came The Bear, another runaway success, as well as another exercise in bleakness. (Not for nothing did Rolling Stone call this eight-episode marvel “the most stressful thing on TV”).

If you haven’t watched The Bear yet, it’s about a high-end chef who returns to his native Chicago to run his brother’s sandwich place after said brother dies by suicide. And just in case you were hoping, The Bear isn’t a show about how easy and rewarding it is to run a restaurant. It is not a feel-good, getting-back-on-your-feet kind of tale. No, The Bear is a show about a man for whom everything goes wrong, and then it goes wronger. In the first episode, the chef in question (irresistibly portrayed by Jeremy Allen White) has to sell vintage denim in a car park in exchange for cash to pay for the day’s meat delivery. Not too long afterwards, a toilet quite literally explodes in his face. Neither of these comes even close to being the most chaotic things that happen to this character in a given 10-minute increment.