A heated debate lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
