A heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.