An intense debate recently went viral on social media, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense 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 hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
