The latest HBO Europe series to make its way to the states, Beartown, is a Swedish sports drama (known as Björnstad) that disguises itself as an inspirational Friday Night Lights on the ice to set up its real story.
Within its premiere, Beartown shows all the makings of a strong, inspirational sports story as it takes us into the small snow-covered town of Beartown. Here, hockey is a powerful and pivotal force. It keeps the money flowing through its sponsorships, brings a sense of pride that draws the community together, and acts as a great outlet for many aspiring young athletes of the town. Basically, equate it to how small Southern towns idolize football and it all makes sense. However, Beartown has been at the bottom for quite some time and the town’s future falls on the shoulders of hometown hero Peter (Ulf Stenberg) after a family tragedy has him retire from playing and move his family back to Beartown.
Throughout the episode, you can feel something building. Maybe it’s the confidence within the young team Peter leads, the budding relationship between Peter’s daughter Maya (Miriam Ingrid) and rising young star Kevin (Oliver Dufaker), or the revitalized excitement of the town possibly gaining prominence again. Regardless of exactly what it is, there’re all these iconic elements of a sports story that draw you into the characters and give you reasons to care. Peter is able to inspire the team and bring out their own contributions in a really awesome speech sequence that Stenberg absolutely nails with his performance. He not only makes the young team feel proud of what they bring to the team but also acts as a more supportive father figure for Kevin, whose real father Mats (Tobias Zilliacus) is much too controlling and creates an unhealthy obsession with hockey for Kevin. Even Peter’s family returning because of the loss of their young child adds more obstacles that grab at your heart and make you care to see the team and the town succeed.
The premiere genuinely makes you believe that you’re in for another inspirational sports tale, but that’s not exactly the case. Anyone who’s seen the trailer for this series or read the book of the same name by Fredrik Backman that the series is adapted from knows that this series takes a dark turn. As a whole, if you wanted to stop reading here and go watch the first episode, I highly recommended doing so just because going into the series blind is likely the best way to enjoy the surprises and shocks this series will have in store – especially with how the premiere plants the seeds so well.
Like I said, anyone that seen the trailer or read Backman’s novel knows that the story will tackle rape culture as one of the players rapes Maya, likely Kevin based on how things are going, and the town will become divided as to how to handle this. It’s actually really smart how the series builds up the impact that hockey has on Beartown and creates importance for certain characters in terms of the roles they play in the town making a comeback since they’ll likely be played against them after the rape changes things. The series certainly builds great potential to really delve into how rape culture can persist and how victims’ voices can be flat out silenced and eclipsed because of their attacker’s social status and people’s inclination to ignore the attacker’s despicable actions because of the impact that their skills have. Even the impact of Peter being the coach of the team and Maya being his daughter creates a lot of potential to flesh out meaningful thoughts about rape culture. The last little clip of the episode does, I think, reveal too much since the episode does a good job building who this rapist could be outside of Kevin, with drug user Benji (Otto Fahlgren) also showing some potential given how the episode silently builds his character. Obviously, I could just look back at the trailer and cheat to find out, but as I said before, it’s much better to see what surprises and shocks are in store.
Beartown disguises itself perfectly in its premiere to ease viewers into the heartfelt inspiration of its young sports story while planting the seeds for the much darker and meaningful actions that await us in the near future.
