An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
