A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
