A intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, following someone posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited 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 mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (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), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
