An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring 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 slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
