An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined 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 the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
