An heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
