An intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
