A heated debate lately spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick 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 latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
