A heated debate lately spread widely on social media, following someone posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
