An heated debate lately went viral on social media, after someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers 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 had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, 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 in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
