An heated discussion lately went viral on social media, after a user posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped 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 (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version 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. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
