An heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn 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
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
