A intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to tell women how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place 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 – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
