An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
