A heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare 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 tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
