An heated debate recently went viral on social media, following a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen 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 benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, 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+ currently.
