An heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, following someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
