A heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick 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 latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
