An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
