An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, following someone posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
