An heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
