A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places 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 the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
