An heated debate recently went viral on social media, following someone asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, 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 came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
