A intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
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 with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up 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 a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
