An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum 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 little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence 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 Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
