An intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled the women 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 nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
