An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where 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 within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up 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 TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
