An intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
