A intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
