An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, following someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare 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 tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing 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 blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
