An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
