A heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, 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 tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, 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 in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility 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 serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
