An heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, after a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
