An intense discussion recently went viral on social media, after a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
