A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste 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 extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
