A heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, following a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. 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 the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
