A intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, 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 conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
