An heated debate lately spread widely on social media, following a user asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend 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 pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
