A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture 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 newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
