An heated debate recently spread widely on social media, following a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
