An heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles 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, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
