A intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son 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
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
