An heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition 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 newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out 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 prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.