An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
