An heated debate lately spread widely on social media, after a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay 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 the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, 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 odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
