A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
