An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
