An intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals 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 comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories 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. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
