A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females 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. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
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 pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation 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 offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
