An heated debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author 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 new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
