An heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
