An heated debate lately went viral on social media, following someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
