An intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
