A heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
