An heated debate recently went viral on social media, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman 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 conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which 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 as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
