An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
