An intense discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
