An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based 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 pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing 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 community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
