A heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but 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 social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
