An intense debate recently spread widely on social media, following a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
