🔗 Share this article

A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.