A heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, 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 streams on Disney+ now.
