An intense debate lately went viral on social media, following someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again 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, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
