A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
