A heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view 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 desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence 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 amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
