A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree 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 bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view 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 serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
