A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
