A intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where some males came online to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
