An heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’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, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
