A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
