A heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
