A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son 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 Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
