A heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: 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 perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience 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, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
