An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
