A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
