An intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
