A heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
