A heated discussion recently went viral on social media, following a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
