An heated discussion recently went viral on social media, following a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
