A intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, following a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – 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 servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
