An intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after a user posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
