An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama 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 new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly 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 the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
