An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, following someone posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. 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 little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal 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 appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
