An heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
