A intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour 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 Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
