A heated debate recently spread widely on social media, following someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, 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 opposing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
