An heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
