An heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none 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 at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
