An heated discussion lately went viral on social media, following a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males came online to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
