A intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
