A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine 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 had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
