A heated debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. 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 competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
