An intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility 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, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
