An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following someone posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.