An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
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 positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. 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 competing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
