An heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, following someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females 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 on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
