A intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
