A heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide 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 an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective 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 agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
