An intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
