A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). 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 sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, 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 competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
