An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
