An heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky 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 (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
