A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
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 shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, 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 is on Disney+ now.
