An intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor 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 creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago 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’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
