An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional 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 planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
