A heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
