A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
