An intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
