A intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, following someone posed a query 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 exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner 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 exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
