An intense discussion lately went viral on social media, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
