An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth 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 Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
