An intense debate recently spread widely on social media, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, 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 desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
