An heated discussion recently went viral on social media, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
