A intense debate lately went viral on social media, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
