An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought 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 females how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn 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 tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
