An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – 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 employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
