An intense discussion lately went viral on social media, following someone asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, 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 tell females how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers 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 mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
