A intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
