A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, following someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child 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 collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, 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.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
