A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum 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 small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet 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 social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
