An heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males came online to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
