An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
