An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
