A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter 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 effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
