A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
