An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after someone asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
