An intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight 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 circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
