An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, following a user posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household 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, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
