A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers 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 had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
