A heated debate recently spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed 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). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
