An intense discussion recently went viral on social media, following a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled 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 nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
