An intense debate recently went viral on social media, after a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version 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 a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
