A intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). 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 to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
