An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue 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 where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
