A heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
