A heated debate lately went viral on social media, following a user asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (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. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
