A intense debate lately went viral on social media, after a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
