An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family 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, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker 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 unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
