An intense debate lately spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
