A heated discussion recently went viral on social media, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
