A intense debate recently went viral on social media, after someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
