A heated debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
