A intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
