An heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, following a user asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. 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 dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
