A heated debate lately went viral on social media, following someone posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
