An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to tell females how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality 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 fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), 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. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
