A heated discussion lately went viral on social media, following someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
Maya Chen is a tech journalist and lifestyle blogger with over a decade of experience covering digital trends and cultural shifts.
