An intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed 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). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried 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 the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
