An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
