A intense discussion recently went viral on social media, after a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
