An heated discussion lately went viral on social media, following a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
