A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
