A heated debate recently went viral on social media, following a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more 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 Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
