A heated debate lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully 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 becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
