An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view 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 allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
