An heated debate recently went viral on social media, following a user posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture 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 out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
