An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, following a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
