A heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
