A heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to inform females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
