An intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing 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 roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
