An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of 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 saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
