An intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish 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, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent 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 religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
