An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, 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 is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.