An intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, 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 allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
