An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where some males came online to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, 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 escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
