A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences 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 effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
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 animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
