A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
