An heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where some males came online to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son 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 in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by science 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: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
