An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, 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 from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
