An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to inform females how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – 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 are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
