A heated debate recently went viral on social media, following someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
