An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker 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 the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
