An intense discussion recently went viral on social media, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance 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 opposing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
