An heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
