A intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly 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 evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
