An heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where some males came online to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
