An intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up 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 attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
