A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark 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 prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
