A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
