A intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from 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 amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
