A heated debate recently went viral on social media, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where some males came online to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
