An heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to inform females how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, 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 conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
