An heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, following a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
