A intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform females how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
