A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
