An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, 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. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
