An intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (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, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
