An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of 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), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
