An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to inform females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing 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 tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
