An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more 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 from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
