An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, following someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child 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 against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
