An intense debate lately went viral on social media, following someone posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling 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, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.