A heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
