An heated debate lately spread widely on social media, following a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later 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 within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, 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, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
