An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
