A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree 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 which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
