A heated debate recently spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
