A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
