An intense debate recently spread widely on social media, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
