An heated debate lately spread widely on social media, following a user posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
