An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither 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 on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
