A intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, 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 unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
