A heated debate lately went viral on social media, after someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal 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 does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
