An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet 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 allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
