An intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
