An heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron 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 benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur 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 droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
