An intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.