An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where 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 in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
