An heated debate recently went viral on social media, after someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
