A heated debate recently spread widely on social media, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
