An heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end 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 proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.