An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more 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 Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
