An heated discussion recently went viral on social media, following someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates 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 a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
