A intense debate recently went viral on social media, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory 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 desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
