An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk 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 which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
