An intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which 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 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. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
