An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). 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. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
