An heated discussion lately went viral on social media, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside 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 indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, 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 attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
