An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
