An heated debate recently went viral on social media, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation 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 the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
