An heated debate recently spread widely on social media, following a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing 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 provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland 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 odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing 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 a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
