An heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, after a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing 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 (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
