An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
