A intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
