An heated debate recently spread widely on social media, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast 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 slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’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. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
