An heated debate lately spread widely on social media, following a user asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
