A intense debate lately went viral on social media, following someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.