A intense discussion lately went viral on social media, after a user asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences 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 based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories 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 science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
