A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
