An intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations 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, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
