A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
