An heated debate recently spread widely on social media, after someone asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males came online to inform women how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come 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 locals especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree 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.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.