A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
