A heated discussion lately went viral on social media, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
