An heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, 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. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to tell females how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
