An heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance 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 attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
