An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, following a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
