A heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, after a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
