A heated debate recently went viral on social media, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
