A intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to inform females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). 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 Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.