An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape 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 circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more 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 Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
