An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction 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 are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
