A heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
