An intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
