An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
