A intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
