A intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk 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 embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
