An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell women how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end 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 in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
