A intense debate lately went viral on social media, after a user asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females 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 clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
