An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where some males came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
