An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
