A heated discussion lately went viral on social media, following someone posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required 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 extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
