An intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query to women: 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 wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
