A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
