An intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
