An heated debate recently went viral on social media, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
