An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
