An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) 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 lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
