A heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
