A heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth 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 collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – 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 proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
