A intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows 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 strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
