An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
