A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
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 in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
