An heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments 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 clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
