A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, following someone asked 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, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare 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 tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again 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, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
