An intense discussion lately went viral on social media, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
