A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
