An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
