An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. 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 competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
