An heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures 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 experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
