An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, following a user asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste 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 latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
