An intense discussion lately went viral on social media, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
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 from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
