A intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which 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, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
