A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
