An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to inform women how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body 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 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 show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
