A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside 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 definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories 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 religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
