A heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
