An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males came online to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly 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 TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
