An heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. 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 which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
