A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
