A heated debate recently went viral on social media, following a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
