An heated debate recently spread widely on social media, following a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
