A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience 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 terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
