A heated discussion lately went viral on social media, following a user asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
