A heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear 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 peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
