An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
