An intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely 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 determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence 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 Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
