A intense discussion lately went viral on social media, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. 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 inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing 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 lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
