A intense debate recently went viral on social media, following a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
