A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
