An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, after someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, 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 took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
