A heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
