A heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets 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 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 establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility 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 allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.