An heated debate recently went viral on social media, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing 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 blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
