An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform females how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated 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 in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
