A intense discussion recently went viral on social media, following someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
