A heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, after someone posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
