An heated debate recently went viral on social media, following someone asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child 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 Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
