An heated discussion lately went viral on social media, after a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor 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 distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
