A intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following someone asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor 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 allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
