A heated debate recently spread widely on social media, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back 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 provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
