A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict 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 adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.