An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
