A heated debate lately went viral on social media, after a user asked a query to women: 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 perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. 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 competing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
