An intense debate recently went viral on social media, after a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
