A heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after a user posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males came online to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
