An heated debate lately spread widely on social media, after a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
