An intense debate lately spread widely on social media, after a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
