A heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
