A heated debate recently went viral on social media, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still 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 shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
