An intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) 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 particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience 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 opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
