A heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.