A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, following someone asked a query 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 vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
