An intense debate recently went viral on social media, after someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
