An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
