An heated debate recently went viral on social media, after a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
