A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
