An intense debate recently went viral on social media, following someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
