A heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly 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 against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
