An intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). 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 planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
