An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
