A heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
