A heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel 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 as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
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 bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
