A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
