A intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, following a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
