An heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
