A intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, following someone posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
