A intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after someone posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where some males came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing 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 profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman 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 fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
