An heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
