A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
