An intense debate lately spread widely on social media, following someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
