An intense discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to tell females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
