An heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more 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 Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
