A intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.