An intense debate lately went viral on social media, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
