A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
