An intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
