An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
