A heated debate recently went viral on social media, following someone posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child 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
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). 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 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 in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
