An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
