A intense discussion lately went viral on social media, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
