An heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
