A intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where some males came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing 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 community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
