A intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell women how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
