An intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces 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 northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman 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 fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
