A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments 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 Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering 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 conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
