An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
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), 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, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
