An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
