An heated debate lately 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? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
