A intense discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds 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. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
