A heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly 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 sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
