An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least 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), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
