A heated debate recently went viral on social media, after someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
