A heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, following a user asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
