A heated discussion recently went viral on social media, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends 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 villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
