A intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
