An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, 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, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
