A heated debate lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
