An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
