An intense debate lately spread widely on social media, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility 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 opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
