An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness 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 sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially 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 community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
