A intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
