A intense discussion lately went viral on social media, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice 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 drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
