A intense discussion lately went viral on social media, after a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.