A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (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. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories 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 religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
