An intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
