A intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (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 at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
