An intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, 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 is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
