An intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering 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 creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
