An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
