A intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent 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 belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
