An intense debate lately spread widely on social media, following someone posed a query to women: would you rather 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 life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
