An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly 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 adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
