A heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
