A heated debate recently spread widely on social media, following someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) 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, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
