An heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
