A heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears 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+ currently.
