A heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis 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 bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
