An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
