A intense debate lately went viral on social media, following a user asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, 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 unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
