A heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
