An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
