A heated debate lately spread widely on social media, following a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated 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, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
