A heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
