A intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight 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 store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
