An intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
