A heated debate recently went viral on social media, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark 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 bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
