A heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
