A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates 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 TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
