A intense debate lately went viral on social media, following someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
