An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
