An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
