An intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males came online to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, 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.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
