A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist 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 are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
