A intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
