A intense debate recently went viral on social media, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
