An heated discussion lately went viral on social media, following a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, 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 offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
