An heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more 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 Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
