An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still 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 Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
