An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – 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 lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
