An heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
