An heated discussion lately went viral on social media, after someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature 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, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.