A heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, following someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates 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 some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
