A heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering 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 had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly 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 determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
