An intense discussion recently went viral on social media, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
