A intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil 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 clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
