A intense debate lately went viral on social media, following a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
