A intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
