An intense discussion recently went viral on social media, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
