An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance 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 attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
