A heated debate recently spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 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, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
