An intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.