An heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
