A heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews 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 men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
