An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
