An heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
