An intense debate recently spread widely on social media, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
