A intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to inform females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, 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 presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
