An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (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, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
