An heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none 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 pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
