An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
