A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
