A intense debate lately went viral on social media, following someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor 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 bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
