An heated debate lately spread widely on social media, following a user posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted 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 coda in which some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
