A heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
