An intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted 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 follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which 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 Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – 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 coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
