An intense debate recently spread widely on social media, following a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science 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.
