An heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely 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 tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear 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 odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent 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 evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
