An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. 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.
