An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
