What Beef (Netflix) shows, with blinding clarity, is just how much effort it takes to keep all those SUVs on the road.

This comedy-drama is the story of an escalating vendetta between Danny (Steven Yeun) and Amy (Ali Wong). A vendetta that grew out of a road-rage incident — all too believable — at the car park of an all-night hardware store. We’ve all been there.

Amy is rich and about to get a whole lot richer, she hopes. Danny is poor, working hard as a handyman — “a contractor”, he says — and trying to make his parents proud.

Danny is Korean American, Amy is Chinese American. They both work incredibly hard. Unfortunately it’s impossible to depict hard work on television.

Amy sees herself as a fine example of a successful small business owner, which is exactly what Danny longs to be.

From these simple beginnings, we get to see the rich hippy world that Amy is trying desperately to penetrate.

We meet Danny’s younger brother, Paul, and their dodgy cousin, Isaac. We also meet Danny’s ex-girlfriend, now married to a perfect man and expecting their first child. We go to the fundamentalist church where Danny weeps in despair. We end up in Las Vegas with Amy and Danny and Paul and Isaac. Beef moves around.

This series is really about the price of the consumerist dream, and specifically the price of the California dream.

Los Angeles is the star here, in all her flimsy glory. “I’m sick of smiling,” Danny says early on. Some people are happy in LA. Some people, like Amy, are too restless to be content there. And some people, like Danny, are just too tired of striving to care.

The acting is just wonderful. As you reach the end of the ten episodes, though, the energy dips. Beef becomes quite reminiscent of the Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once, with its phantasmagorical world and its return to core values.

But Beef is at its most successful when it’s dealing with the rage adults are left with when we don’t get what we want, or even when we do: the impotence and the disappointment of the ordinary person. That’s what makes it fun to watch. And its characters are sharp. Halfway through the series, we are introduced to a pair of incompetent burglars who could have starred in Home Alone. Beef is never above slapstick.

Put it this way: I would watch Beef even if I wasn’t paid to. That’s how good it is.