An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker 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 liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
