An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
