A intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, following someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
