An intense debate recently went viral on social media, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland 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 slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
