A intense debate lately went viral on social media, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
