A heated debate recently went viral on social media, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to inform females how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
