An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, following someone posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates 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 inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
