A intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after a user asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield 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 audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
