A intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
