An intense debate recently went viral on social media, following a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son 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 are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing 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 store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
