A heated discussion lately went viral on social media, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman 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 fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof 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 is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
