An intense discussion lately went viral on social media, following a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
