An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, after someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
