An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing 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 had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
