An heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after a user posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation 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 liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
