A intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
