An intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males came online to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent 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. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
