A intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to 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 preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
