A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
