An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to inform females how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods 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 strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
