A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
