An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated 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 females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
