I was worried about watching the second season of The Bear — dubbed “Part II” in the opening episode — because I couldn’t see how it could possibly sustain the level of riveting intensity achieved in the first season. But I needn’t have worried. Though this fast-moving, ten-episode Hulu series includes drastic narrative changes to the basic situation that defined it, The Bear is still tremendous.

It’s probably the finest show about hardscrabble ambition ever made, because it dramatizes in such harrowing detail how the odds are stacked against anyone trying for greatness who doesn’t have a lot of money. Keeping in mind that it’s almost impossible to achieve greatness even if you do have a lot of money.

If you recall, season one of The Bear was all about Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), a young chef of extraordinary talent who cuts his rising New York City career short to come home and try to save his family’s run-down Italian sandwich shop, the Original Beef of Chicago. “The Beef” had been run by Carmy’s brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal), until his escalating drug addiction, enormous unpaid debts to their Uncle Cicero (Oliver Platt), and all the other crushing pressures of maintaining a small, foundering family business drove him to suicide.