An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped 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 pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers 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 were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility 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 competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
