An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
