An heated debate recently spread widely on social media, following someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot 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 confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
