A heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which 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, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
