An intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, following someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, 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 follow-up where some males came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing 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 easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
