A heated discussion recently went viral on social media, following a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, 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 stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
