A intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility 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 competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
