An intense debate lately went viral on social media, following a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
