A intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, following a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional 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 conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
