A heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
