An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more 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 Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
