An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing 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 (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
