An intense debate recently went viral on social media, following a user posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on 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 Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory 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 distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
