An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others 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). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (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 at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
