A intense discussion lately went viral on social media, following someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
