An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
