A heated debate recently spread widely on social media, following someone posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still 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 provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
