A heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
