A intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. 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 audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
