A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
