An intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed 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 little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
