A intense debate lately went viral on social media, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods 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 peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild 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, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
