A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to inform women how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
