An heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly 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 evokes memories 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. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
