An heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view 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 TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
