A intense debate lately went viral on social media, after a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect 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 again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
