An heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
