An heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of 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 spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
