An intense debate lately spread widely on social media, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation 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 provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
